What is Reddit and How Can We Use it as a Tool for Advertising?

If you’re a company wanting to promote your brand through social media the chances are that you’ll think of utilizing Facebook, Instagram or Twitter almost instantly. Those aren’t bad options considering there are over two billion registered users combined. What most people don’t consider is another platform with over 1 billion monthly active users– Reddit.

Reddit allows you to submit, read and comment on posts that cover almost any topic you can imagine. If you’re looking for something more specific, Reddit likely has a “subreddit” for that topic. Subreddits are a network of hundreds of sections that cover various subjects. For example, if you really enjoy reading about kittens in your free time there is a “kittens” subreddit that you can follow. It also allows its users to “upvote” or “downvote” any photo, blog post, article, or video. The more “upvotes” a post receives, the higher up on the front page newsfeed it can be found. Thus, Reddit being the source of some of the biggest viral stories and trends

With over 9,000 active communities on Reddit, this gives advertisers an opportunity and makes it far more convenient to target certain audiences. However, Reddit’s user-face and company website has aged about the same as Craigslist, and not until about six months ago did marketers even consider using this platform based on its reputation of trolling and harassment. Plus, the stigma of its users hating advertising. It’s the kind of platform where people aren’t afraid to call advertisers out for trying too hard and forcing their marketing messages into conversations.

However, back in August Reddit debuted a new ad offering called, Promoted User Posts, which gave marketers the ability to sponsor user generated posts, with permission, in different parts of the website and target to specific users the brand wants to reach.

This Adweek article talks about how brands are starting to lean into the content and community itself to subtly shape online conversations. When Coca-Cola wanted to tease its Super Bowl spot starring Marvel superheroes Hulk and Ant-Man in February, it set up a branded post asking consumers which characters they would like to see in the commercial. They generated more than 400 comments, 17 million impressions, with the average user spending 13 minutes with the thread.

“Bachir Zeroual, global director of marketing ventures for Coca-Cola, explained that the brand put paid ads into its efforts because ‘most Coke campaigns end up on Reddit one way or another.’ In other words, Zeroual puts marketing dollars behind Reddit to keep chatter positive.”

Overall, Reddit users tend to be more tech-savvy, more cynical of marketing messages, and protective of their on-platform groups. And for that, there’s good reason why Reddit is the second most trusted social media source for news.